


5 Things Sherlock Doesn't Know About John

by tj_teejay



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:09:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tj_teejay/pseuds/tj_teejay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dragonflies, felonies, The Holy Grail, a Ferris wheel, and Afghanistan. John is fairly sure Sherlock doesn’t know about any of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Things Sherlock Doesn't Know About John

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [cascadewaters’ prompt](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/497806.html?thread=73480846#t73480846) in the comment-fic LiveJournal comm. My apologies, cause this hasn't been beta'ed.

* * *

 

1)

It’s as simple as a dragonfly when it comes to things that scare John Watson. He isn’t even sure why. Perhaps a childhood experience he’s repressed, perhaps it’s just a random personality trait. But their long, slim abdomens and the way to seem to hang suspended in mid-air always creep him out.

Sherlock doesn’t know this, or at least John is fairly sure that his friend doesn’t. He tries to recall whether they’ve ever happened upon a dragonfly in Sherlock’s company, but it’s probably a good thing that you rarely encounter the insect in the greater London area.

John quickly clicks on the arrow symbol of the online image gallery that Mary is making him look at, moving from the blue _Calopteryx virgo_ depicted on a green leaf to a black and white bird half hidden in the underbrush. He hopes there won’t be any more pictures of dragonflies in this album.

 

2)

John’s stag night hasn’t been the first time John spent a night in a prison cell. He’s fairly sure Sherlock doesn’t know this—if only for the fact that Sherlock had been pronounced dead for over three months at the time, and had been very much absent from John’s life in every sense of the word.

John likes to chalk it up to the anti-depressants that he’d weaned off a little too quickly. As a doctor, he should have known better than to just stop taking the SSRIs, but bouts of depression coupled with abrupt recesses of loneliness could do such things to a man.

Whenever he thinks about the incident now, it brings a faint smile to his lips, because to any outside spectator it would certainly have been an amusing thing to watch. He doesn’t blame the traffic warden for calling the police. Surely, a raving madman stomping all over the roof of his car while waving a parking ticket wasn’t something you faced every day.

John prays that Sherlock will never find out, because if he does, he is sure that Sherlock will store it in his Mind Palace to retrieve at the most inappropriate time.

 

3)

There was a time when John could recite _Monty Python And The Holy Grail_ by heart. He could launch into perfect mental playback of any scene in the movie and repeat the dialogue word-by-word. He could sing the Spam song and recite the repressed peasant scene or the hand grenade of Antioch. He doubts that Sherlock knows this.

He’s tried watching the film with Sherlock, but Sherlock being Sherlock, he immediately switched to overanalysis mode and rattled on about the of the misrepresentation of the costumes, the blatant medical imprecision of blood spurting out of severed limbs, and the inadequacy of the filming locations.

John frustratedly switched the movie off even before the knights reached Camelot, realizing once again that there was no converter in Sherlock’s Mind Palace that processes black humour. Coupled with the notion of complete and utter disinterest in pop culture, John has long given up on the idea of engaging in any endeavours to convey the merits of mainstream entertainment to Sherlock.

Besides, John has learned that a good case will easily outclass the excitement and thrill any action movie can ever offer.

 

4)

Nothing says _I’m into you_ like being stuck in a Ferris wheel at 50 feet above the ground. Or at least that’s what John thought when he was sixteen years old.

It was a bit of a crazy story how John lost his virginity, but he’s never boasted about it, mainly because it was awkward and not an experience he readily wishes to recall. Her name was Tamsin, and she wasn’t exactly a conquest. Yet, she’d instigated it, and before he knew it, riotous hormones were taking over. It lasted all of eight minutes.

Mary once asked him about his first time, and he’d hidden an embarrassed smile when she gawked at the reveal. “It really sounds more adventurous than it was,” he commented, quickly trying to change the subject.

He likes to think he’s come a long way since; he’s no longer that bumbling boy who didn’t have a clue about what he was doing. He’s sure of one thing, however: His choice of sexual partners has definitely improved since.

 

5)

For about two hours, John Watson wanted to be dead.

This was back in Kandahar, and he has never told anyone about it—not even his therapist. He’d been out on a medical supply run. Lots of desert, oppressive heat, their Humvee rattling along a barely recognizable dirt road.

And then, _boom_ , out of nowhere. A deafening explosion, gunfire, disorientation, blood—so much blood.

He doesn’t have a clear recollection of the turn of events from that day. He doesn’t really know how he got out alive. The wound in his shoulder serves as eternal reminder that he was the only survivor of a company of five, among them his friend and companion Silas.

He vaguely recalls trying to staunch the blood flow of fatal wounds, applying tourniquets, checking pulses, unavailing CPR. He remembers the dread as the rush of adrenaline wore off and the realization of loss and helplessness sunk in. Like disjointed fragments of a movie, he remembers sinking to his knees in the dry sand, wishing to die.

Days later in the hospital, his shoulder and arm immobilized, he tries to piece together the shards of memory—and fails. Jagged edges have splintered off, the mirror is beyond repair. His will to live slowly returns in synchronicity with the monotonous drip of IV painkillers, and he makes it through the long weeks of recovery and physical therapy.

What Sherlock _does_ know is that John thrives on the adrenaline rush. It reminds him of what the will to live is all about, and lets him forget that, once, he wanted to be dead. John feels very much alive now.


End file.
